If you choose to do a clean install, you don't need to enter a key. Provided you install the same edition as you had before (Home or Pro) you can skip entering a key. It will activate automatically from your existing digital licence held on Microsoft's activation servers. As lx07 says, a new disk doesn't count as a hardware change.

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I can't make an image. I tried that. Macrium reflect couldn't do it. I think that's something to do with how badly that disk got itself damaged.

And that's why I want a completely new disk rather than reinstall on top of that one.

So I can pull that old disk out and put a new blank disk in and boot from an install disk or usb, do the install and that'll be it - the system will find my serial and activate just from the report it sends back on my hardware configuration?

Even if the new disk is somewhat different: 2T instead of one for instance.

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good news. thank you. i couldn't wish for anything more - except a way to keep my current installed apps but I think that's not possible for me.

I believe one can do a 'repair' installation that will keep the apps but that would then still be on the same disk and my problem is, I think, this flaky disk.

I have repaired this installation before as well as I can. Currently I can't open ports on this machine. Set port forwarding on the router and the router will tell me ports are open. But traffic from the web can't get in to my IIS installation and no port checker ever reports the ports as open.

they report them as closed. even reporting port 80 as closed.

that's just spontaneously happened recently, the last in a long series of problems, and I put it down to another sector going bad on the disk or similar.

So if you've got any good ideas about all that please let me know...

meanwhile I'll pull the disk and put up a new clean installation.

thanks again.

:)

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28808

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